


From between the waves

by xerampelinae



Category: And Then There Were None - Christie
Genre: Alternate Universe - Book/Movie Fusion, Experimental Style, F/M, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 20:44:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10704753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xerampelinae/pseuds/xerampelinae
Summary: They fall like the china figures, shattering easily to this force or that. It’s the wait that bothers Vera most, shielded somewhat by Lombard’s attentive behavior. Still, Vera finds herself watching the distant beach, even as she stands beside the General, considers the depths and what she might find in them if she just walked into its waves.





	From between the waves

_“It wasn’t your fault.”_ The words echo across time and ring in her ears in different voices, and she can only stare out across the waves lapping their way to shore. She wants to look away--to forget, to continue carving out a meager survival--but the crashing waves and the thick salt settles in her mouth and in her hair and she cannot so much as pretend to forget. 

Through the inquest that had followed it had lingered: the burn of betrayal, the resignation, the aggrieved _“How could you?”_

_“How could you?”_ Vera had not said. _“How could I_ let _you?”_

The words burn in her, and she pretends it’s the salt spray in her eyes and swallows the remembered acid burn of salt water, violently expelled.

-

Vera Claythorne very nearly turns back on the little jetty. The breezes off the ocean cuts cleanly through the heat of the day and the too-close press of bodies in the third class carriage. The respite is at once delightful and terrifying that Vera can only manage by falling back into her school mistress’ mantle, following the strange party onto Narracott’s little boat. 

Lombard watches her with a strange intensity, as he has since they stayed behind for the General’s arrival, helps her board. She doesn’t need the help so much as Miss Brent, straight-backed and proper but aged, but Lombard must see her hands shake because he reaches out and steadies her as she crosses the narrow strip from jetty to boat and watches the cast of her shadow over the shimmering surface of the water. 

Vera shivers and shuts her eyes as she sits down. The others are watching the General make his slow way aboard and Lombard is watching her still, steady and focused.

-

Lombard takes her hand again when she deboards, just as steady as before.

-

Then there is dinner, awkward as the strangeness of the scene, the gathered few becomes apparent. Then there is the record spinning forth its accusations. All too soon Anthony Marston is confessing and falling from his feet, choking on his last drink. And then there were nine.

-

They fall like the china figures, shattering easily to this force or that. It’s the wait that bothers Vera most, shielded somewhat by Lombard’s attentive behavior. Still, Vera finds herself watching the distant beach, even as she stands beside the General, considers the depths and what she might find in them if she just walked into its waves.

Vera resists. Then the accusations come, the chill of the night penetrating the grand house once the generator goes out. The missing pistol discharges in the midst of the confusion, and then there were four.

-

Lombard asks Vera about her supposed crime--about Cyril--in the early morning, after they’ve locked her into her room. He camps out on the balcony through the night, keeping watch rather than waking her. He’d ceded to her unwillingness to invite him in until armed appropriately; that had been expected on some level.

“Did you kill him, the one they said you did?”

Vera shakes her head slowly, eyes wide and face approximating placidity.

“But you knew him?”

Vera nods.

“Was it-- _was_ it a murder?” 

Vera’s face twists. “I don’t--it was an accident. But also not. He was just a boy.”

“Did you try to save him?”

“I should have been able to. I should have.”

“But did you try?”

“Yes,” Vera says finally, a little distantly. “I tried with everything I had.”

-

Vera and Lombard make their way down to the beach, along the smoothed-down pebbles and through the gritty sand which Vera’s heels sink into with each shaking step. This close the ocean is an overpowering presence, the tide lapping close. Lombard kneels by Armstrong’s body, pulling something clear of the breast of his jacket.

More than the ocean, this lets the sob Vera’s been carrying since the jetty break free.

“Who are you?” Vera demands, sobs, as Lombard cradles the sealskin in his hands and looks at her but does not understand. “Why are you doing this?”

“My name is Charles Morley,” he says. “I’m here because I was the real Mr. Lombard’s friend, and I wanted to understand what drove him to his death. Beyond that--I don’t understand.”

“Where did you get that? Why is that here?” Vera cries.

“What are you talking about, Vera?” Morley says, cradling the skin in his hands. It is silver-white and supple. Even now, wet and forgotten, it is beautiful.

“That--” Vera says, hand shaking as she points.

“Why, this? It must be a skin of some type--” Morley says, and proffers it. Without realizing it, Vera finds herself seated on the wet sand, tears slipping down her cheeks as she shakes.

“He took it. So I would stay. And I didn’t realize at first, I didn’t always need it. I only realized--when I saw that Cyril had slipped away--”

“This is yours,” Morley says, comprehension dawning and hand extending with the sealskin.

Vera’s up on her shaking legs and breaking for the sea without thought before she’s crashing back into the sand again, Morley’s weight taking her down. The skin presses against her shoulder, silken texture muted by the cloth of her jacket but still unquestionably present.

“Let me up,” Vera says, pinned to the gritty sand. The waves lap a few meters away; a few more seconds and she’d have made it.

“You said it nearly killed you last time--”

“So?” Vera cries out. “Let me up.”

“I won’t let you kill yourself, Vera.”

They realize together that she has the pistol still, her hand pressing futilely at his shoulder and freezing against it. He freezes too. And then Vera lets her hand drop, lets her whole body spill back into the wet sand, and finally she weeps, trapped between the land and sea, between her ghosts and his.

-

“The one who took your skin--that was who caused that boy’s death, wasn’t it?”

Vera nods, tears exhausted. Morley still presses her down into the sand, but now in more of an embrace than a restraint as before. 

“I think--I think he wanted me to stay. So he took it.” Vera confesses.

“And he kept it after?”

“He could hardly look at me after. It was clear that he blamed me, and how could he not?” Vera shuts her eyes against the gulls wheeling overhead. “I know he must have been the one to name me a murderer. No one else ever knew about me. How else could my skin be here?”

Morley strokes her hair gently, reassuringly. “I am sorry, Vera.”

“I am too,” she says, and finally. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“I am too,” Morley says.

-

“There must be someone else on the island,” Morley says eventually. “It doesn’t make sense otherwise.”

“What must we do?” Vera says wearily.

“I think we were not intended to leave this beach together. Fire the gun, but not at me, then return to the house.”

“Okay,” Vera says. 

“I will follow you, Vera, I promise. You will not face down Mr. Owen alone.”

“Okay,” Vera says. “I believe you.

-

A shot rings out and the gulls scatter. Vera twists her way free of Charles’ Morley’s dead weight and makes her sinking way back through the sand and the slipping pebbles.

-

Vera is not alone, as promised, when she faces down Justice Wargrave, who had survived his apparent death and its pronouncement to swallow one final, bitter solution. 

It is Monday morning now and they have survived to see the boat’s return.

Above the shifting waters the gulls wheel and cry and the morning sun casts down. Light gleams back up from between the waves. Narracott bears them back along to shore, Charles with his arm around Vera, and her sealskin packed safely in the valise at her feet.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by the book, the 1945 movie, and the bbc series (of which I've only seen the first episode). In the context of a non-child-murdering Vera, why and how would a selkie almost drown and be unable to save a drowning child?


End file.
